Thoughts of Today’s Text
The Psalm tantalizingly suggests that a lot of praising was going on, not merely before the 148th Psalm, but before there were Psalms, or songs, or words or even people. St. Augustine pointed out the heavens have always been praising, but the Psalmist wished “to add his own exhortation” to that — as if you come upon people doing a good thing and enjoying it, you like what they are doing and you say “That’s the way! Keep on doing it!”
All of creation, simply by existing, is a chorus of praise to its Maker. The sun marks the days, the moon the nights, time and space the evidence of a noble, good Creator. Stars, creatures, running water, snow, wind, trees, hawks and caterpillars: “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3). Both things bound by gravity and the canopy above form an all-enveloping circle of praise — what Hans-Joachim Kraus called a “double choir.”